


The End of the Road

by lily rose (annabeth)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Bottom Dean Winchester, Episode Tag, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Major Character Death, M/M, Sibling Incest, Spoilers, Unrequited Destiel, Wincest - Freeform, canonical love confession, coda to 15x19, episode coda, spoilers for season 15
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-08
Updated: 2020-12-08
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:41:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27960107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annabeth/pseuds/lily%20rose
Summary: "Cas told me he loved me, Sammy, before he let The Empty take him."
Relationships: Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester
Comments: 7
Kudos: 35





	The End of the Road

**Author's Note:**

> I have not seen the finale (and don't plan to) but I read the description on the super-wiki, though nothing that happens in the finale is mentioned here. This fic pretends that the finale never happened.

"Cas told me he loved me, Sammy, before he let The Empty take him." Dean pauses, pregnant with feeling, then goes on. "I couldn't answer. He sacrificed himself for me, and all I could think about was how I loved _you_."

Sam is lying on Dean's bed, balanced on one hip and his elbow, his obscenely long legs stretched out. They're back in the bunker, but it feels empty—pun not intended, definitely not—without Cas there. Even if he has Sam, even if Jack saved the world—and this time, all Sam and Dean did was allow themselves to have the crap beaten out of them to give Jack time—it isn't the same without Cas, and that hurts, aches like a splinter lodged in his chest.

"He _loved_ you?" Sam asks, brow crinkling. "Isn't that a strange thing—but then, no, I guess not…"

"I'm pretty sure he meant how like _I_ love _you_ ," Dean says, because he's lying on his bed too, on one hip and balanced on his elbow, facing Sam. He's running the knuckles of one hand up and down Sam's bare torso, causing goosebumps to pop out all over Sam's skin with each leisurely pass up over his ribs and down to just above his ass. Dean feels guilt for a lot of things, but one of those things has become this new normal in his life: Cas, the angel who had had to learn how to feel, had fallen _in love_ with him, and Dean couldn't reciprocate, not even when he understood that Cas's confession doubled as a goodbye.

He remembers Cas saying, _something I can't have,_ and wonders if Cas really did know about him and Sam.

"Cas… had those kind of feelings?" Sam asks, raising an eyebrow. "When did _that_ happen?"

"I don't know, Sammy. I just. I believed him. I think he would have wanted to kiss me, if he thought he could." Dean strangles the next words for a moment before he continues, because admitting this to Sam is difficult. This is a secret they've been protecting a _long_ time. Most of their lives, in fact. "I think he knew about us."

"But—" Sam's face is awash with worry and disbelief. "He never treated us like we were—"

"Deviants?" Dean supplies. "Maybe he didn't care. Maybe it didn't matter to him. Once Cas got over his blind obedience to an absent God—and fuck, do I wish Chuck had just _stayed_ absent—I think he understood that it was the loving that was important, not the who." Dean strokes Sam again, and Sam arches like a cat being petted.

"That makes sense," Sam says, voice breathy. "Keep… _Dean_ ," he moans as Dean finally sweeps his palm down, cupping Sam's ass before sliding around the front, where Sam's bare cock is curved up against his belly, brushing Dean's own. Dean runs a single fingertip, blunt nail included, up and down Sam's impressive length and Sam moans again and shifts forward, a tiny thrust of his hips.

"Sammy," Dean mutters, feeling his pulse spike and sweat break out at his temples. This, this right here, is why Dean couldn't reciprocate Cas's feelings, and it shatters Dean a little, knowing that Cas had given himself up to some kind of torment to protect Dean. To protect Sam, too, and Jack. Cas had known—somewhere, he had known—that Dean needed to live, and he needed Sam. And he had gone toward that darkness like that didn't matter; like his heart was whole instead of broken.

And Dean doesn't understand how Cas could love him and not feel his heart was broken when Dean didn't reply to his confession. When he said he'd felt the ultimate happiness, the type of happiness that would summon The Empty, and had let it take him.

And then Sam is kissing him, lips soft and warm and familiar, and Dean forgets, for a time, about his guilt. He loses himself in the kisses, the wet, the heat, the clash of their tongues; he forgets himself in the feel of Sam's thick, calloused fingers encircling his cock; he opens himself up to Sam's love—the only love of this type he knows how to accept—as Sam turns him on his back and plunges in.

He drowns in sensation as Sam thrusts and Dean parries with his hips; he excels in pleasure as Sam fills him up like a water balloon of excitement. Dean can feel each and every inch making itself at home within his body; he can touch the heat of Sam's cock with the lube-slick passage of his body. Sam's precome makes it even more slippery, until Dean is gasping for breath, his back arching away from the mattress, and just before he comes—just before the ultimate completion takes him—he realizes he's keening in the back of his throat and the bedsprings are creaking and groaning, and he _remembers_.

_Cas._

Cas had his own room in the bunker; he probably heard Sam and Dean on those nights when they'd given in to desperation, when they'd had a long, hard hunt and needed each other's bodies to wind down, to find peace. That must have been how he knew—though he never said a word and obviously Dean can't be sure, but…

And then the crisis overtakes him like a train speeding off the track, and Dean's eyes are squeezed closed, bright splashes of light painting the backs of his eyelids as his body sputters in its rhythm and he comes. He can feel his jizz splatter his belly and hears Sam grunt and moan as he shifts the angle, driving deep within one last time—then he can feel his brother's come coating the inside of his body.

When Sam pulls out with a wet, slick _pop_ , Dean's ass is tender and swollen from the abuse it's taken; Sam is not a small guy. But Dean's still used to the feel of his brother, the shape and texture of his cock and the softness of his skin certain places—like the backs of his knees, where his skin is like the unburdened satin of a baby's—and his own body knows Sam, knows him in ways even Dean's mind doesn't.

As they fall together on the bed, limbs entwined, Dean begins to card his fingers through Sam's hair, the long, lushly beautiful locks that he will never admit to loving as much as he does. Sam would never let him live it down, and that's how it should be.

They might be lovers, but they'll be brothers to the very end, and Dean cannot let prime opportunities like Sam's long, girly hair pass him by.

"He was at peace with his choice," Sam mumbles sleepily. "Cas had to be, or The Empty wouldn't have come." Soft snores follow this proclamation, snores that will grow louder over the course of the night, considering the number of times their noses have been broken. The last time, when Chuck broke Dean's nose at the end of the world, he doesn't think it healed right, not even when Jack fixed it.

Dean's eyes have already closed, and he's barely clinging onto consciousness, but Sam's words make sense, and they soothe his aching heart a little. He falls into sleep like a little canoe going over a waterfall, inevitable and maybe a little rough, but he sticks the landing just the same.

++

Dean dreams. Of pastures filled with cattle. Of the little dog sleeping at the foot of the bed, on the floor. Of fire and blood and broken things, and the soft, sweet mending that came from Jack's pure soul.

But mostly, he dreams of Cas. Of his earnest eyes and his steadfast heart. Of the trench coat he always, always wore. Of those last moments, the tears in his eyes, but the smile turning his lips into happy little curves as he told Dean he loved him. Dean doesn't dream of those last moments, though, the moments when The Empty showed up. He doesn't see her—it. He just sees that smile, so sweet and beautiful his heart ached with it.

His lungs feel like a bellows in his chest, as he tries to breathe around the swamping nausea of sadness that had threatened to devour him too. And he dreams, still and long and silent, like a lake at midnight, of Cas's quiet breath in a cavernous, echoing space.

Dean dreams. Of restaurants full of people. Of Sam's obsession with certain kinds of shampoo and conditioner. Of Jack, reigning in heaven, surrounded by bright white light. But mostly, he dreams of Cas, again, still. He sees his face when silvered by moonlight. He recalls those first few awkward hunts, like when Cas held his FBI badge upside down. He sees Cas in a rainbow of different ways, colored a thousand different shades, and his heart thumps solidly, at peace with itself.

Dean dreams.

++

Dean wakes alone; Sam has gone—old habits die hard, after all. Time with Jack and Cas living with them meant a lot of late nights and early morning sneak-outs, and the few times they got caught by Jack they lied and said they were up late looking at lore, or playing video games.

But there's a rustling outside Dean's door, the sound of feet shuffling, as if in nervousness, and Dean throws open the door, thinking Sam has returned—maybe he brought coffee and bacon. He doesn't touch the bacon himself, but he's willing to cook it every so often for Dean—an indulgence Dean is grateful for.

But standing on his threshold is like right out of his dreams. Dean blinks rapidly; he cannot believe his eyes: but Cas is standing there, trench coat, tie, deep blue eyes. _Not dead,_ Dean's mind supplies. _Totally watched The Empty take him, you're losing it, Dean-o,_ his heart replies. (It sounds a little like Alastair, to be honest.) But his battered, bruised soul… _that_ rejoices.

"Cas!" he cries, and flings his arms around him. Cas stumbles backward at the contact, the exuberance, but he doesn't flinch away, even though Dean realizes too late that he's hugging a man who's in love with him, and he doesn't feel the same way. He lets go like Cas is a piece of scalding bacon that's just seared his tongue, and feels himself grow tongue-tied, not at all his usual bluster—the bluster that hides his lack of confidence. A lack of confidence he thinks Cas probably suspects, and has suspected for a long time—and then Cas's goodbye comes back to him, and he remembers that Cas doesn't see him as something broken and discarded. That he doesn't think of him as "daddy's blunt little instrument."

No, Cas sees things in Dean that Dean doesn't think anyone else does, including Sam, though he'd never know—Sam would never have given him that speech. But then, Dean hides his broken places from Sam. Or at least, he tries to; it's hard to tell how much Sam knows, but if it's anything like what Dean knows about Sam, maybe Dean is just way off and the only thing stopping them is their failure to effectively communicate. Some days it feels like he speaks to Sam better with his eyes and his body than his words, and he's pretty sure Sam is the same.

But not Cas. No. Cas, facing both Death and The Empty, had conjured up the words he needed for a last-minute love confession, and yet he doesn't look the slightest bit discomfited or embarrassed.

"Dean," Cas says gravely in his gravelly voice. "Dean." The repetition is strange, almost, but Dean thinks he understands.

"Cas, The Empty. How did you escape?" Dean cannot believe this is happening; Cas, back in the bunker, he who had been warm and solid in Dean's embrace.

"The Empty has returned to slumber," Cas says. "And Jack… well, he gripped me tight and raised me from perdition. Or, at least, a kind of angel purgatory." Cas doesn't mention the demons, and Dean wonders what it's like to be trapped for eternity in a big empty space with the cosmic beings that directly oppose you. Though sometimes, Dean thinks, the demons were _less_ evil than the angels—who are pretty much all a bunch of dicks, except for Cas, of course. Demons lie and murder and traffic in souls, but still they're weirdly honest about their evil. The angels always acted as if they were morally superior and therefore any nastiness to their characters didn't exist.

Cas smiles a little at his joke, and Dean smiles too, feeling relief spread through him, melting the apprehension he'd felt like the sun melts ice cream on pie.

"Jack saved you?" Dean wants to hug him again, but it was out of character enough for that first one. And then he wants to pray to Jack, to thank him—

"Jack breathed life back into me, but for a temporary time only. I will soon be entering Heaven, and helping out with reorganizing. But he said I should see you. Ease your conscience."

"You mean…" Dean can feel his heart drop, like a stone tossed in a well. There seems to be no bottom, just an endless weightlessness. He knows he doesn't love Cas the same way he loves Sam, but he _does_ love Cas, and to think—

"You'll see me again, Dean." Cas wears a weary smile, but it's genuine. "You have the rest of your life to live out first, but you will see me again."

Sam rounds the corner and stops dead, his hands full of coffee and bacon, and barely hangs onto them. "Cas! Oh fuck, I didn't expect—" He puts down the food and grabs Cas; Sam has always been the hugger, the "you're too precious for this world," dork of the two of them.

"You're alive," he says joyfully, and Dean had thought his happiness at having Cas returned to them—however briefly—had been powerful, but it's nothing compared to this: the way his heart throbs in sudden delight, the way his whole body and being centers on Sam and thrills to the fact that Sam sounds so _happy_.

Sam has been his center, his moral compass, his whole life. When they were kids, raising Sam had sometimes been so easy because his brother was so much on the straight and narrow. He misbehaved, like all children, but he had a staunch moral code and he never wavered from it—not until they grew up and set out on the road, yet somehow Sam still manages to unswervingly figure out what's right. Watching him now, Dean is filled with a happiness so absolute it's tinged with pensiveness.

"Cas, oh G-I mean. Well, whatever. Oh, Jack?" Sam laughs. "I can't believe it!" But Dean is watching them both closely, and he can see the way Cas glances at Dean, the yearning in his expression, before he understands that Dean is watching Sam, and that soppy look he's probably wearing is for his brother.

"I was right," he says softly. "I knew I couldn't have you, and I suspected I knew why all along. I'm happy," he adds. "I want this for you, this connection. All I've ever wanted is…" but he doesn't finish.

"You…" Sam, ever astute, picks up on the meaning beneath the lines, the fine print in Cas's comments. "You're leaving us again."

"I only came to say goodbye, properly," Cas says. He pats Sam's shoulder and backs out of the hug. "Mostly to you, Sam. I was sorry I couldn't before."

It seems strange to think that Cas has decoded their relationship, that he really does know that Dean and Sam are lovers. But there truly is no judgment on Cas's face; he looks as serene as ever, and as unruffled. Surely—Dean remembers Chuck, suddenly, and he knows his face has gone tomato red. Had _Chuck_ watched them? On his favorite show, his favorite channel—had he sat back with popcorn and commented on their sexual technique every time they fucked each other or shared a kiss?

"Dean?" Cas's brow is furrowed, clearly confused. "Have I… embarrassed you?"

And Dean realizes that Cas thinks his blush is due to Cas's feelings for him—his _unrequited_ feelings for him.

"No! No, Cas, I'm absolutely thrilled to see you, just a little, uh, dismayed that—"

Sam, the galaxy brain, picks up on this, too.

"It's hard to be known," he says. "For a very long time this has been a secret that no one's known but ourselves." _And possibly Chuck,_ Dean adds silently. But of course Sam understood right away that Cas had figured it out. He's probably known that Cas had figured it out since the moment he walked onto the scene and saw the two of them standing together. For an instant, Dean wonders if Sam is jealous. Would his brother see Cas's feelings for Dean as competition?

But Sam doesn't seem upset, and Dean prides himself on understanding Sam's moods. He is his little brother, after all, and Dean knows everything about him, doesn't he? He knows Sam in a way Chuck never will, not with all his omnipotence or his voyeurism. Chuck may have created humans, and he may have kept Sam and Dean running like rats on a little wheel for decades, but he doesn't _know_ Sam, doesn't understand what makes him tick.

"I am sorry," Cas says, breaking into Dean's thoughts. "I can hear Jack on angel radio. It's time for me to go now." He places a hand on each of their shoulders and grips them hard, then releases them. "Be happy," he murmurs, then there is the sound of wings and he's gone.

"Did that really just happen?" Sam asks in wonder, and Dean yanks him to his chest, clutching him like Sam is all he has left in the world—because it's truth, maybe the _only_ truth, now that Jack and Cas are gone. He clings to Sam like they're both dying in the middle of a vast sea and he cannot allow them to be separated.

"He got his wings back," Dean mumbles into Sam's neck. Sam smells good, like cooked bacon grease and a slight tang of sweat; his brother's scent always soothes him. He lets Sam go, eyes the bacon a moment, then says, "Right now, there's only one type of meat on my mind," and yanks Sam into his room and shuts the door with conviction. Sam groans at his terrible pun, but he doesn't try to dissuade Dean from his course.

After that, there's nothing but the two of them and the harmonies they create together with their bodies, moving in sweet, sweet tandem, the type of communion eternity is made of.

And Dean doesn't dream.

The End (of the road)

**Author's Note:**

> That montage at the end of 15x19 was the boys and Baby going out in style.


End file.
